SCA Students Spread Christmas Cheer in the Southwest Georgia Community and the World

Sherwood Christian Academy junior and senior students spent the majority of Wednesday, November 16 providing community service in the Albany area during SCA’s Community Service Day. Their goal: to be a light and share Christmas cheer! This was accomplished through Operation Christmas Child shoebox organization and setting up the Christmas display at Thronateeska Heritage Center.

One group of students helped the Operation Christmas Child organization at The Hope Center on Pine Avenue. They greeted donors who pulled up with trailers and trucks to drop off shoebox gifts, unloaded boxes, organized and packed the shoeboxes, and then spent time praying over the shoebox gifts with the donors.

Each Operation Christmas Child shoebox was filled with toys, toiletries, and supplies for a child in need across the globe. SCA elementary families filled and donated 124 shoeboxes, and our juniors and seniors had the opportunity to unload, organize, and pray over them at the OCC distribution center.

“We appreciate their willingness and joyfulness in serving so that the boxes will get to children who need them,” OCC Central Drop-off Team Leader Connie Thomas said.

The students handled hundreds of shoeboxes and spent time decorating lids to make plain white boxes more joyful with Christmas themes. Their prayer was that each shoebox gift they touched would minister to a child across the world with the light of Jesus.

Students over at the Thronateeska Heritage Center also unloaded and organized items for Christmas as they unearthed a large collection from the storage area and arranged each item in the museum area for display. The work the group did in a few hours saved the Thronateeska team days, possibly weeks of work.

Lead Educator at Thronateeska Heritage Center Alyssa Watrous said, “Having the Sherwood Christian Academy students come out and help has been the best help because there are thousands of Santas. When you walk in the storage area, it was really hard to move around and we were ready to get this exhibit out.”

Alyssa attributed how quickly the work was being done with the students’ great communication with each other.

“We’ve shared with them what we wanted them to do and they’ve shown amazing communication skills that have helped clear this storage area. We’ve already gone through half of it in the span of 20 minutes and saved us so much time,” she said.

By the end of the afternoon, the students put the finishing touches on arranging Thronateeska’s upcoming Christmas display of vintage and festive holiday decorations in the History Museum and the Georgia Museum of Surveying and Mapping in anticipation of the center’s holiday events in December.